AND FECUNDITY OF WOMEN ACCORDING TO AGE. 



485 



tions of the compared women of these different ages be as nearly the same as 

 possible. This is not attempted in the seventh table. 



TABLE IX.* — Showing the Initial Fecundity of Women of Different Ages in 



THE First Year of Marriage. 



Ages of Wives newly 1 

 Married, . J 



15-19 



20-24 



25-29 



30-34 



35-39 



40-44 



45-49 



50-54 



55-59 



60-64 



65-69 



Total. 



No. of Wives newly \ 

 Married, . . . j 



No. of Wives Mothers^ 

 within first year of > 

 Marriage, . . . j 



Proportion of latter \ 

 to former is 1 in j 



700 



96 

 7-3 



1835 

 339 

 5-4 



1120 

 139 

 8-0 



402 

 46 

 8-7 



205 

 19 



10-7 



110 

 4 



27-5 



46 



20 



6 



2 



1 



4447 

 643 

 69 



Percentage, .... 



13-71 



18-48 



12-41 



11-44 



9-27 



3-63 



... 





... 



... 



... 



14-46 



Table ninth is 

 married women o 



cons 

 f diif( 



truct( 

 3rent 



id to 

 ages. 



show 



By 



^ the 

 the r 



relati 

 eturns 



ve initial fecundity of newly- 

 5 of the Registrar- General we 



calculate how many women at each succeeding year of age contracted marriage 

 in 1855, in Edinburgh and Glasgow. My extracts from the register for 1855, 

 shew how many of these women bore living children before they had been a year 

 married. When the two figures are compared for each age, we have the fecundity 

 at the outset of child-bearing at each age. The table reads as follows : — Of 700 

 women married between 15 and 19 years of age inclusive, 96 bore a living child 

 before they had been wives for twelve months, or one in every 7 3 ; and so on. 



Table tenth is in every respect the same as the former, only it shows the 

 fecundity within 24 months of married life ; or the number of women bearing living 

 children before they were two years married is compared with the number of 

 newly married. The observation that the fecundity within 24 months is much 

 more than twice as much as the fecundity within 12 months of marriage, appears 

 to me to give this table more substantial value than the former, as an indication 

 of the actual fecundity of the outset of child-bearing at different ages. 

 Both these tables show the highest rate of initial fecundity to be between the 



* The number of wives married at different ages in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1855, is arrived 

 at in the following manner. The marriages in Scotland in 1855 were 19,680. The marriages in 

 Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1855 were 4447. The distribution of the 19,680, according to age at 

 marriage, is given at p. 22 of the Registrar-General's Annual Report for 1861. This distribution 

 requires a correction for the number whose ages at marriage were not known. Calculating on the 

 ages of the whole 19,680, the proportional distribution of the 4447 married in Edinburgh and Glas- 

 gow is found to be as in the table above. 



